Arkansas HOA Solar Rights

Key Findings

• The absence of statutory solar protection is the operative fact here. Neither Title 18 (Property), which houses the Horizontal Property Act, nor Title 4, Chapter 33 (the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993), contains any solar-specific provision protecting owners against association restrictions.^1,2
• Solar in Arkansas communities runs on a split structure: condominiums follow the general provisions of the Horizontal Property Act, read with the recorded master deed, while planned communities operate under recorded CC&Rs, read with the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 for corporate formalities. Arkansas has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act.^1,2
• The only recent statutory change to the governing framework, Act 516 of 2025, modernized condominium formation and declarant rules — and contains no solar provision.³
• No published Arkansas appellate decision in the relevant window addresses an HOA solar dispute, and no active bill would create solar access protection for Arkansas HOAs.

Details

Section 1 — Overview: Solar rights for HOAs in Arkansas

Arkansas has no solar access or solar rights statute limiting an association's authority over a unit owner's solar energy device. Nothing in the Arkansas Code voids, caps, or overrides a recorded covenant or condominium declaration that restricts, conditions, or prohibits rooftop or ground-mounted solar.⁴ The state's headline solar legislation, the Solar Access Act (Act 464 of 2019, originating as Senate Bill 145), sits entirely on the utility side: it raised the commercial system-size cap from 300 kilowatts to 1 megawatt and opened the door to third-party solar leasing and power purchase arrangements, with net-metering compensation administered through the Arkansas Public Service Commission — none of which bears on an association's architectural authority.⁵ Arkansas also has no dedicated solar easement enabling statute. Owners may create a sunlight-access easement only through ordinary recorded covenants or express grants under general easement law, and such an instrument is voluntary — it cannot compel an association to permit an installation.⁴ Absent a solar-specific statute, solar in Arkansas communities runs on a split structure: for condominiums, the general provisions of the Horizontal Property Act read with the recorded declaration; for planned communities, the recorded CC&Rs read with the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 for corporate formalities.^1,2 That places Arkansas among the no-protection states, a contrast with strong-protection states such as California, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Texas, whose statutes limit or void association solar restrictions.⁴ The sections below detail the statutory framework, what an association can and cannot do, recent activity, and national positioning.

Section 2 — The statutory framework

2A. Solar access statute (the absence)

Arkansas has no solar access statute limiting an association's authority over solar energy devices. A review of the Arkansas Code confirms it: neither Title 18 (Property), which contains the Horizontal Property Act, nor Title 4, Chapter 33 (the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993), contains any provision protecting solar installations from association restrictions.^1,2 A 2010 Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research summary of state renewable-energy property laws identified roughly a dozen states with statutes constraining covenants against solar and similar improvements — Arkansas wasn't among them.⁴ The consequence follows directly: the recorded declaration or master deed, and the general condominium or corporate statutes, fix an association's authority over solar, with no solar-specific protection layered on top. The utility-side boundary matters here and gets misunderstood often. The Solar Access Act (Act 464 of 2019) and the net-metering measures that followed it govern the relationship between a solar customer and a regulated utility, including export credit rates and system-size caps set by the Arkansas Public Service Commission.⁵ They don't limit, cap, or condition what an association may require of an owner under its governing documents, and readers shouldn't treat them as HOA-relevant. No other state's solar statute applies in Arkansas.

2B. Solar easement enabling provisions

Arkansas has no dedicated solar easement enabling statute either. Many states enacted "solar easement" statutes beginning in the late 1970s that expressly authorize a property owner to acquire a recorded easement guaranteeing access to sunlight across a neighbor's land; Arkansas didn't follow suit.⁴ Owners in Arkansas may still create a sunlight-access easement, but only through ordinary express grant or recorded covenant under general easement and property law, not through a solar-specific mechanism. A solar easement of that kind is a voluntary agreement between consenting property owners. It gives a unit owner no right to install solar over an association's objection, and it doesn't override a declaration that restricts solar. Its function stays limited to protecting an existing installation's access to light against future shading by a consenting neighbor's construction or vegetation.

2C. The governing-document and corporate-law backdrop

Because no solar statute applies, the controlling rules come from a split structure. For condominiums, the Arkansas Horizontal Property Act (Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq.) supplies the general framework for the regime, the council of co-owners, and administration, read together with the recorded master deed and bylaws. The Act requires that administration be governed by bylaws and that the master deed set out the regime's particulars, but it contains no solar-specific provision — so for solar questions, the recorded declaration controls.¹ For planned, non-condominium communities, Arkansas has no community-association statute at all. The recorded CC&Rs are the operative rulebook, and the Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993 (Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq.) supplies only corporate formalities — board and member meetings, voting, records — for associations incorporated as nonprofits.² Arkansas has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act. The order of precedence in a dispute runs from applicable statute, to the recorded CC&Rs or declaration, to the bylaws, to the rules. For solar specifically, because none of these statutes speaks to solar, the declaration controls — and for planned communities, there's no statutory backstop of any kind on the question.

Section 3 — What an Arkansas HOA can and cannot do regarding solar

A. Approval and architectural review

An Arkansas association may subject a solar installation to architectural review where its governing documents grant that authority — standard practice in recorded declarations and CC&Rs. For condominiums, the rule-making and administration authority derives from the Horizontal Property Act's bylaws and administration provisions, statutory and general, not solar-specific; for planned communities, it derives from the recorded CC&Rs read with the Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, contractual and corporate.^1,2 No Arkansas statute creates an expedited or mandatory approval track for solar.

B. Permissible and impermissible restrictions

Under its declaration, an association may regulate placement, mounting method, screening, and aesthetics — and, because no Arkansas statute caps or limits solar restrictions, it may impose restrictions up to and including an outright prohibition if the governing documents authorize it.⁴ The only meaningful limits come from the declaration's own terms and general common-law doctrines requiring good faith and reasonable, consistent enforcement of covenants. Arkansas sets no statutory cap on cost or efficiency impacts of the kind found in strong-protection states.

C. Governing-document and disclosure considerations

Solar rules in Arkansas typically appear in the declaration or CC&Rs, and in architectural guidelines adopted under them, rather than in any statute. Amending or adding solar rules follows the amendment procedure in the governing documents — and for condominiums, the Horizontal Property Act's provisions on modifying the regime and administration.¹ Arkansas imposes no solar-specific resale or disclosure obligation; disclosure of covenants runs through the recorded documents, which are public records at the county level.

D. Dispute resolution and remedies

Absent a solar statute, an owner challenging a denial relies on the declaration's own enforcement and dispute provisions, general contract and property law, and, for condominiums, the Horizontal Property Act. No solar-specific statutory remedy exists, and no solar-specific fee-shifting provision exists in Arkansas law. Trial-level disputes proceed in Arkansas Circuit Court, with appeals to the Arkansas Court of Appeals and discretionary review by the Arkansas Supreme Court.

Section 4 — Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill enacted or pending in the Arkansas General Assembly over the past 24 months creates or amends solar rights affecting Arkansas HOAs specifically. The solar bills of recent sessions have stayed utility-side — net-metering and financing measures administered through the Arkansas Public Service Commission — outside the scope of association authority, so this page doesn't treat them as HOA-solar activity.

One 2025 enactment did touch the governing statute for condominiums, without addressing solar:

B. Recent appellate rulings

No published Arkansas appellate decision in the past 36 months addresses an HOA solar dispute, an architectural denial of solar, or enforcement of an association's solar restriction. Solar-denial appeals decided in this window come from other states — they don't bind or persuade under Arkansas law, and no one should cite them as Arkansas authority.

C. Active legislative debates

No active, publicly tracked proposal in the Arkansas General Assembly would enact solar access protection for HOAs. Legislative attention to solar in Arkansas has stayed on utility ratemaking and net metering, not association authority.

Section 5 — National positioning and related coverage

Arkansas falls into the third of three broad solar-rights categories nationally. The first: strong-protection states, whose statutes void or limit association solar restrictions, including California (Civ. Code § 714), Florida (Fla. Stat. § 163.04, enacted 1980), Arizona (A.R.S. § 33-1816, companion to § 33-439 enacted 1979), Colorado (C.R.S. § 38-30-168), Nevada (Nev. Rev. Stat. § 278.0208 and § 111.239), and Texas (Prop. Code § 202.010).⁴ The second: solar-easement-only states, which enable voluntary recorded easements for sunlight access but don't override associations. The third: no-protection states, where the declaration fully controls and an association may restrict or prohibit solar. Arkansas sits in this third category, and — unusually — without even a solar easement enabling statute. For multi-state operators, the practical implication runs deep: a firm accustomed to a strong-protection state can't assume owner solar rights carry into Arkansas, where associations operate without any statutory solar backstop and planned communities operate under CC&Rs alone. Legislative momentum toward solar access protection in Arkansas is absent; recent solar lawmaking has actually run the other way, tightening utility-side net-metering economics rather than expanding owner rights against associations.

HOA Weekly's Arkansas Solar Rights coverage updates quarterly as the legislature and courts act. No federal rule comparable to the FCC's Over-the-Air Reception Devices rule (47 C.F.R. § 1.4000, adopted in 1996 under Section 207 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which protects certain antennas and satellite dishes up to one meter in diameter) extends to rooftop solar, so state and association rules control here.⁷

Recommendations

• Immediate (boards and managers). Treat the recorded declaration or CC&Rs and any architectural guidelines as the sole source of authority over solar. Confirm whether the governing documents already address solar; if they don't, apply the general architectural-review and exterior-modification provisions and document decisions consistently. Don't lean on Act 464 or any "Solar Access Act" language when responding to an owner's request — that law is utility-side and confers no owner right against the association.
• Near term (attorneys). For associations wanting predictable solar handling, draft an explicit solar policy through the governing-document amendment process rather than a bare board rule, so the standard rests on the strongest available authority — the declaration. For condominiums formed on or after September 1, 2025, reconcile any solar guidelines with the updated Horizontal Property Act definitions from Act 516.
• For homeowners. Recognize that in Arkansas, an association can lawfully deny or heavily condition solar if the governing documents permit it. Secure written approval before contracting, and negotiate at the architectural-review stage — there's no statutory appeal, fee-shifting, or "reasonable restriction" cap to fall back on.
• For multi-state operators. Don't port a strong-protection-state playbook — California, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Texas — into Arkansas. Build Arkansas procedures around document authority and consistent, good-faith enforcement.
• Thresholds that would change this guidance. Enactment of an Arkansas solar access statute — a bill voiding or limiting covenants that prohibit solar — or a published Arkansas Court of Appeals or Supreme Court decision addressing an HOA solar denial. Either would move Arkansas off the no-protection baseline and should trigger a full revision of this page. Absent those, the analysis stays stable.

Caveats

• The finding that Arkansas has no solar access statute and no solar easement statute is a negative, confirmed against the Arkansas Code (Titles 18 and 4), the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research's own 2010 survey of state renewable-energy property laws, and convergent independent reporting. No single affirmative citation can prove it, because no such statute exists — it should be re-verified each quarter against the Arkansas General Assembly's bill database.
• Some commercial solar-marketing sites assert that "Arkansas law recognizes solar easements." That's true only in the trivial sense that any state permits privately negotiated easements — no Arkansas Code section creates a solar-specific easement mechanism, and readers shouldn't read that claim as statutory protection.
• The out-of-state statutory citations in Section 5 appear for national positioning only and are not Arkansas authority. Confirm their exact section numbers and enactment years against each state's official code before republishing them elsewhere.
• Utility-side matters — net metering, system-size caps, third-party leasing, the Arkansas Public Service Commission — are deliberately excluded from the HOA-authority analysis; this page references them only to draw the boundary.

Footnotes

1. Arkansas Horizontal Property Act, Ark. Code § 18-13-101 et seq. (official Arkansas Code, Bureau of Legislative Research) ↩
2. Arkansas Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1993, Ark. Code § 4-33-101 et seq. (Act 1147 of 1993, Arkansas General Assembly) ↩
3. Act 516 of 2025 (Senate Bill 323), "To Amend the Horizontal Property Act" (Arkansas General Assembly enrolled act) ↩
4. Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research, "State Responses to Covenants Against Going Green" (2010) (survey of state solar/renewable property statutes, omitting Arkansas; lists Ariz., Cal., Colo. Rev. Stat. § 38-30-168, Fla. Stat. § 163.04, Nev. Rev. Stat. § 111.239, and others) ↩
5. Arkansas Solar Access Act, Senate Bill 145 / Act 464 of 2019 (Arkansas General Assembly bill record) ↩
6. SB 323 (2025) bill history and status, notification that SB 323 became Act 516 (Arkansas General Assembly) ↩
7. Federal Communications Commission, Over-the-Air Reception Devices (OTARD) Rule, 47 C.F.R. § 1.4000 ↩